Difficulties

One of my favorite sayings is, no matter how difficult it is to hear, “Reality is always your friend.”

Everydayness is my problem. It’s easy to think about what you would do in wartime, or if a hurricane blows through, or if you spent a month in Paris, or if your guy wins the election, or if you won th...

A Story from the Philokalia A story is told in  The Philokalia  about a young monk who went to an older monk to confess a struggle. The older monk was appalled, telling the young monk that his strugg...

Statistics show that 80 percent of new pastors leave the ministry within five years. A friend once remarked, “If they were able to pastor churches without people, they might last ten years.” Most past...

An American businessman went to Oberammergau to witness the famous passion play, just before the outbreak of World War II. Enthralled by this great drama that depicts the story of the cross, he went b...

God says to give thanks in everything. That doesn’t mean you need to give thanks FOR everything. You don’t need to give thanks FOR that bad day. Or FOR that bad relationship. Or being passed over at w...

Happy people look beyond their circumstances to someone so big that by his grace, even great difficulties become manageable—and provide opportunities for a deeper kind of happiness.

We have to pray with our eyes on God, not on the difficulties.